


Durum Est Lex, Non Sit Lex

by Porcupine19



Series: This User's Imaginary 'Fantastic Beasts 3' Series [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, MACUSA are dicks, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Post-Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, well sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22509511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Porcupine19/pseuds/Porcupine19
Summary: A few months after the events of Crimes of Grindelwald- and sometimes, it feels like everything's falling apart. Especially for Tina.
Relationships: Tina Goldstein & Lally Hicks
Series: This User's Imaginary 'Fantastic Beasts 3' Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619542
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. The Professor and the Auror

Before the Fall of 1927, Professor Eulalie Hicks had never had a reason to set foot in the Birdcage, as the prison enclosed deep in the bowels of MACUSA was popularly known. Now, on the first Sunday of March, 1928, she's praying for the day to come when she never has to set foot in it again.

But she goes anyway, every week, because she has to. It's not just the Pukwudgie alumni who'll go above and beyond for the people they care about, after all. And if it were, she wouldn't be here at all.

The Birdcage is no Azkaban. (Lally has heard all about that place, and the thought of even someone like Grindelwald being trapped there sends a chill deep into her blood.) MACUSA breaks no international laws, doesn't require any special exemption to avoid censure for the way it treats its prisoners, which is how the British get to keep their Dementors. The inmates aren't slowly going crazy trapped in their worst memories; the hygiene facilities are adequate and the food edible, and the visitation allowances- at least for the lower-security prisoners, by appointment only- are pretty reasonable. But none of that can erase the coldness, the thick, permeating sense of despair that settles further inside you the deeper you walk inside the place. 

Perhaps there are a couple Dementors hidden around here, after all...

Lally dumps her bag, cloak and wand with a guard at the entrance, and assumes a scarecrow posture without waiting to be asked; it's a familiar routine by now. She keeps her face blank and composed through the mutterings of _revelio_ and _apparecium_ and so on, and resists the urge to huff and tap her foot as the wiry, bored-looking Auror runs a Probity Probe up and down her body for the fifth time. Then, she walks into a cubicle and screws her face up just in time to stop the torrent of liquid that splashes down from overhead from going into her eyes. (She's made that mistake with Thief's Downfall before- it stings.) Another Auror makes adequate work of getting her dry with a blast of hot air from their wand, while she tries not to roll her eyes at the whole damn circus. Probity Probes are all very well, but her work has the potential to render them all but obsolete- if her calculations are right, if the charms work like they're supposed to, if the prototypes come out ok, if if if... But for now, MACUSA has little choice but to stick with this rigmarole; they're not taking any chances since Grindelwald's escape and it's a mercy, really, that even the lower-security prisoners are allowed any visitors at all.

Returning the Auror's curt nod (she suspects this one's just antisocial: the others all greet her by name now, and she's made enough small talk to know that she went to Ilvermorny with several of them, and two have children who are really enjoying her classes), she takes a few steps forward and hears the heavy, metal door slam shut behind her. A few seconds later an identical door, in front of the first one but several feet to the left, yawns open. An older, deceptively gruff-looking brunette sticks her head out. "Afternoon, Professor. You had a good week?"

Lally grins, and it's mostly genuine. It's unfair, she knows, to hate people for doing their jobs. But right now, she hates MACUSA and everything in it with a passion; it's hard to reconcile the two. "Hey, Valerie. Not so bad- whole lotta marking to do, though."

Valerie laughs. "C'mon, then. If they hadn't all gotten so security-crazy I'd be letting you find your own way. Huh, c'est la vie..."

Lally follows the woman through the door, which another guard closes behind them.

The Birdcage should really be called the Aviary: it's not a single cage, but rather hundreds (maybe thousands) of them piled on top of each other. All four walls of each are nothing but bars, the implied lack of privacy making Lally's stomach churn. Luckily, each one does have a small water closet whose walls are at least opaque, as are the floors and ceilings. The place is far from squalid, but the smells of sweat and piss and cheap, nasty food have apparently proven impossible for the inmates to scrub out entirely. Everything is grey, too- the walls, the floors, the drab, shapeless uniforms. There's even a tinge of grey about everyone's faces, and Lally doesn't think it's just the light, mixed as it is with the watery glow of the cold, metallic sunshine, filtering through vents in the ceiling from the sidewalks far above them.

She makes sure to stick close to Valerie, and not just because one, the place is creepy enough when you're not alone and two, the witch makes for a neat buffer against the multiple men (and a few women) who loudly critique the shape of her ass or proposition her outright as they walk by. As well as that, for all the witch's comments about Lally's familiarity with the building, she isn't so sure. There's just something so... disorientating about it all. The view remains identical no matter which way she faces and, even when she throws all her effort into concentrating on it, she simply can't seem to remember which direction she cam in just now, or how far back was the last corner they rounded- and working out how to retrace her steps back to the entrance is basically impossible.

In fact, Lally is 95% certain- she knows that even if she asked, no-one here would give her a straight answer- that some smart-ass has done a very tricky bit of spellwork, something embedded in the fabric of the building that messes with the head of anyone not protected against it. She's positive she can sense it, can almost _smell_ it: the low, persistent, burning thrum of magic like a cloud of excessively shy midges. Actually, the other reason she can't say for sure is that if there is such a spell, it's all mixed up with about a hundred others, doing things like keeping the walls and doors unbreakable and locked, repelling rats and cockroaches, stopping any magic getting in or out of the bars of the cells. The place is positively swimming in the stuff- magic, not cockroaches- and, with the sensitivity to magical signatures that she's picked up from years of study, it would be enough to make her dizzy and sick. Luckily, she's spent close to two decades enclosed behind Ilvermorny's walls, so she's more than used to such conditions. Not that this place is anywhere near the level of her quarters at the school.

She's jerked out of her reverie when Valerie stops in front of yet another plain, heavy metal door. It screeches open at her touch, and she stands aside. "Well, go on," she says, when Lally hesitates, wondering how much she'd give to not be having to do this again. The guard's tone is brusque, but not unkind. "Don't do to keep a girl waiting."

The Visitation Chamber has just enough room for two people to walk abreast around a single, plain table and two chairs. The walls are the same cold iron as everything else in this shit-hole, but Lally knows that all four are enchanted so that, although the inmate and visitor cannot see out, giving them a flimsy illusion of privacy, the guards- one on each side- can see in at all times. The chair closest to Lally is unoccupied; on the opposite side of the table sits a young woman about Lally's age. Almost exactly her age, in fact- their birthdays are less than two weeks apart. At Ilvermorny they'd always had a joint celebration, sneaking out to the top of the West Tower to share, under a smothering blanket of stars, bottles of butterbeer and gigglewater and every packet of candies and chocolate they'd blown the rest of their scant pin money on. They'd renewed their binding vows of friendship, giggled about girls in Lally's case and boys in the other's, and talked about the future. 

They'd never imagined this.

Back then, their faces had been flushed and youthful, alive with excitement and hope and that wonderful, brilliant sense of _impossibility_. Now, though, the other woman's face is haggard and gaunt, and looks more so every time Lally visits. Her thoughtful, deep brown eyes are hardened by months of dull work and poor sleep, and her dark brown hair is lank and unkempt. Her shoulders, which she'd drawn back so proudly after all that business in '26, are hunched over all over again, every bit of that hard-won confidence and happiness vanished, torn apart like a butterfly in a hurricane. And worst of all, there's an ugly, mottled bruise on her left cheek.

When she sees Lally, those beautiful eyes fill suddenly with tears.

But despite all this, when she rises from the chair and throws herself into Lally's furious embrace, Tina Goldstein is smiling.


	2. For Security Purposes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tina and Lally talk and everyone is v v sad. (I'm so sorry- things will get better, I promise!)

“Hey, Lally.” Tina hated the way her voice sounded: little more than a whisper, and choked with barely-suppressed tears.

”Hey, Teen.”

Tina let out an audible sob at the familiar voice, but didn’t quite dissolve into an avalanche of snot and tears- as she sure as hell had done on previous visits. It was just so typically her- she'd served as an Auror for years, fought Gellert Grindelwald himself- twice- and now here she was, letting the months of damp and cheap, disgusting food and petty insults be the things that really reduced her into a snivelling, emotional wreck sobbing a damp patch shaped like Canada into her old best friend's shoulder.

”’M sorry,” she mumbled, clumsily wiping her face with the sleeve of her drab, gray shirt. Lally pulled her back into the hug. “Oh, shut up. It needs a wash... yeah, that’s it. Just breathe, sweetheart, I got you...”

Tina let out an even louder, more undignified sob at that, and wrapped her arms even more tightly around the Charms professor, as though if she gripped her tightly enough they'd be able to just Disapparate away, and she'd never be left alone in this place again.

It wasn't long before the guard by the door, a young, red-haired man whose muscles they'd have giggled over helplessly in another life, snapped that _alright ladies, that was long enough, break it up,_ and they reluctantly pulled out of the hug. Lally kept her hands on Tina's shoulders, though, her gaze hardening even as she seemed to be trying to keep her tone light. "So... you wanna tell me how you got that?"

She raised a hand and brushed her thumb, gently, over the small but, Tina knew, pretty nasty-looking bruise.

Tina shrugged. "It's nothing."

Lally glared at her. "No, it isn't. Tell me." Over her shoulder, Hot Redhead gave Tina a Look.

She shrugged again, and moved to sit down in the cold, hard chair; Lally did the same, but clearly wasn't about to drop it. And besides, Tina didn't want to lie to her friend. So: "I got into a fight, that's all. It happens. This woman, she... I dunno, she said I was looking at her funny or something. I told her to beat it, and it all just..." She made a waving movement with her hands as though mimicking an explosion. "If it makes you feel any better," she added, looking back up at Lally, "I gave her a couple shiners myself." She grinned, savouring the memory- the satisfying thud of fist against flesh and hard bone, the rush of adrenaline. She'd had to do two days of the worst chores to get her visitation privileges back, but for that moment it had felt worth it. For those few brief minutes, she'd felt as if she were in the heat of battle. 

She'd felt like an Auror again.

Lally grinned back. "Get you, wampus. Any other news?"

Tina grimaced. "What, in here? I wish." Then she remembered: "Oh! Newt wrote again, I got his letter yesterday. Probably nothing in it you didn't know already, though." Tina can feel a blush spreading across her cheeks, a treacherous smile nudging at the corners of her mouth. "Uh... the Re'em gave birth to twins this week. A boy and a girl. They sound real cute," she added, blushing even more furiously. Newt had written in such ecstatic, loving detail about the big, slimy, ungainly calves, the beginnings of their parents' magnificent horns curling up from their heads, golden skin shining like the sunlight Tina missed so desperately as they sniffed at Newt's hand with big, wet, black noses and suckled from their exhausted momma. He'd found her, he wrote, wounded and caged in a cellar in Portsmouth, and had only just been able to save her- she'd been suffering massive blood loss, thanks to the smugglers who'd presumably taken her from Mongolia and had no doubt, Newt had written bitterly, made hundreds of galleons selling her blood, which would grant incredible strength to whoever drank it. He guessed she'd become too much to handle, so they'd decided- quite literally- to cut their losses. Tina wasn't sure she'd ever l- cared for him more than when she read his words about his precious beasts. His reverent wander and quiet, stubborn compassion, plus the way he understood the creatures like no other human could, shone through even his spidery, chaotic handwriting- and Tina had read (over and over again) enough of his letters, after almost five months of having little else to occupy her. A year ago, reading her newly bought copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ , it had only meant more pain and sadness. Now, she traced his words with her fingers, and it felt like hope. Except...

"Lots of bits were cut out," she added. "Whole paragraphs. I mean, I've _told_ him to be careful about putting information in, but..."

Lally frowned. "C'mon, Newt might be forgetful sometimes but there's no way he'd do anything that could get you in trouble." 

Tina huffed. "Maybe they're just being petty." As if banning Newt from entering the country wasn't bad enough.

"Maybe. Although..." Lally shot a cautious glance at Hot Redhead. "It could've been something about your case." In response to Tina's bewildered look, she added, "Outsiders aren't allowed to discuss case details with prisoners any more, not in writing. Jackson rushed it through last week."

 _"What?"_ Tina, furious, almost jumped out of her seat; Hot Redhead moved towards them with a warning expression, his hand on his wand. It was just enough to bring her back to reality and shut her up ("aggressive behaviour" was a favourite reason for cancelling visitation privileges in the Birdcage), but she could still feel the anger burning away inside her, and had to force herself back down to a normal volume. "What the hell is _wrong_ with him? What's the _point?"_ Access to newspapers had been cut off back in December, so she relied on the snippets of whatever noteworthy happenings that her visitors could bring her.

Lally grimaced. "He claimed it's just for security purposes, but- I mean, come on. It doesn't take a genius to see that what he's _actually_ doing is making it _look_ like he's doing something-"

"- when all he's _doing_ is making life difficult for everyone in here," Tina finished. "Except that nobody besides you, Newt and the other guys actually gives a damn about that, because as far as Jackson and everyone else is concerned I made my bed and oughta lie in it, ideally in sheets that smell of someone else's piss with bedbugs and roaches on the side for as long as is humanly possible." She felt herself growing short of breath and stopped, feeling sheepish. "Alright, not me personally, but- you know-"

"Oh- actually, you're wrong there. It absolutely _is_ you personally." Lally's tone was almost cheerful but, when Tina glanced up at her friend, her expression was grim.

"Right. Well, that's nice. The serial killers and rapists downstairs must hate my guts right now... so did Jackson actually, you know-?"

"He didn't mention you by name, no. But he dropped all kinds of hints about how MACUSA's biggest priority's gotta be stopping Grindelwald, and how because of that they've gotta keep an eye on prisoners who might have contacts or, I don't know, _family_ in the Alliance, and how anyone who betrayed their fellow wizards, _especially_ those who swore to uphold the law, would be dealt with as harshly as the law permitted, and-" Lally looked at Tina, guiltily. "Sorry. But, well, you get the idea."

Tina nodded, mutely, trying to squash down the lump that was congealing rapidly in her throat. It wasn't that the insults particularly hurt her now, not in a shocking kind of way. They were just a cheap copy, really, of the things that had been said about her in the press. Both Lally and her legal counsel, a soft-spoken but straight-talking witch by the name of Rajaa Azad, had already given her a gentle yet matter-of-fact play-by-play of the various people, both journalists and ordinary readers, who'd written into the _Ghost_ , the _Witch's Friend_ and countless other publications (if they weren't already shouting their views on the radio) calling her at best incompetent and at worst a traitor who'd been spying for Grindelwald all along. Both her pursuit of an unauthorised investigation and Queenie's defection made her, clearly, someone whom neither MACUSA or the public could ever trust again, and the general consensus seemed to be that she should be locked up for life or even executed- preferably the latter. Within MACUSA, Leonidas Jackson was one of those people's most vocal advocates. The rumour went that the President was more sympathetic but, with her retirement scheduled for this summer and Congress filled with people who supported Jackson's hardline policies, there wasn't a whole lot she could do about him. If he gets any more power...

The election. Mercy Lewis, the election-

"You think he's going to win?" she asks Lally. "Is he going to... you know...?"

"Subject us to at least five years of him as President?" Lally attempted a wry grimace, but her expression grew more serious by the second, and fear started to writhe in Tina's stomach. "Honestly... yes. It's looking more and more likely. Almost inevitable. Zhang _might_ be able to swing it still, but her platform's all dumb, pointless things like, you know, concrete facts and basic human decency. She's not making much headway against the kind of stuff that comes out of Jackson's mouth."

Tina inhaled a single, shuddering breath and then released it, her fists clenching and unclenching on the table. She told herself it was ok, it still might not happen. Jackson might have been a hardcore isolationist, in favour of more and more violent and repressive action against Grindelwald supporters, from the suspected (like her) to the convicted, but he had made little secret of the fact that he despised No-Majs, No-Maj-borns, part-humans, the works. His opponent for the Presidency, former Head of International Magical Relations Jessica Zhang, a No-Maj-born herself, was his opposite in every way, namely in that she was not a vile piece of shit. She was an experienced politician, an excellent stateswoman, someone with a cool head in a crisis and with a fairly liberal, unmistakably compassionate voting record. She could still swing it- she was still just ahead of him in the polls. And unlike Jackson, she hadn't gone on record saying things with a toxicity level to rival Grindelwald himself. And there were the allegations of cruelty made by that freed house-elf, and his programme of brutal censorship of everything from the press to private letters... of course people were scared, and wizards like Jackson would do anything to capitalise on that. But they weren't prejudiced enough, not _stupid_ enough to throw away the liberties they had left by putting a man like him in the highest office in the country, were they?

 _Were_ they?!

"So in other words"- she said- "We've all got President Jackson to look forward to this summer and, if I'm not out of this place by the time he's sworn in, there's a good chance I'll never get out at all."

"Exactly. Look, our best chance is to get them to drop the Treason With Intent charges, because that's the one that means execution on a Not Guilty plea. The whole Wilfully Aiding an Enemy part Dumbledore thinks we can contest, we're at least 90% sure Picquery's been conflicted about Credence since '26 and they can't prove that-" she faltered- "that Queenie- doing what she did- was premeditated or that you had any idea before the fact. Jacob's testimony should cover that."

Tina nodded, feeling a little less cold than she had five minutes previously. Lally, Newt- it hurt like hell to be away from Newt but at least he was there, he was ok- Jacob, Nagini, Dumbledore, Azad, goodness knew how many other contacts in several countries, all looking out for her. It broke her heart and soothed it and put it back together all at the same time, and before she knew it tears were coursing down her face again. All she could manage to say was, "Alright."

Lally took her hand again and squeezed it, gently. "The Gross Misconduct charge... that'll be more difficult."

"Well, obviously. It's true."

Lally snorted. "Their loss." Her hands continued to gently blanket Tina's own, thumb smoothing little circles on the back of her wand hand. "This place doesn't deserve you. You're the only person here who tried to do the right thing. Something kind."

"Yeah, well, the law isn't _kind_ , Lally." Tina's jaw clenched as memories of Credence, screaming in pain as her former colleagues tore him apart and then, that night in Père Lachaise, walking away through Grindelwald's fire."It's not meant to be kind. It's meant to protect. You know, like it should have protected Credence."

Lally was holding her hands a little tighter, now. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

Tina inhaled. Exhaled. Pulled herself together. "So we need to get a trial, soon. Has Azad spoken to you at all?"

"Haven't you-"

"She hasn't been here this week yet. Last week she said there hadn't been any updates... we went through what I'll be saying when it does come to trial and, well... she just said she was doing everything she could to, you know, bring it forward."

"Good! We're not paying her to sit on her ass and drink my coffee. You make sure she tells you in good time so you can really prepare, ok?"

Tina smiled at her friend's expression. "Yeah. Yeah, I know." Then, her face fell a little: Lally wouldn't be happy with what she was about to say. "But honestly... Lal, I already know what I'm saying. If they give me a chance to speak, which they should. And besides the obvious "No, I don't support Grindelwald" and "No, I didn't realise my sister had a screw loose."" She shut her eyes, fighting back tears as her insides burned with anger and grief and shame and fear, thinking of Queenie.

"Ok... and that would be...?"

Tina shrugged again, and explained to the tabletop and their still interlinked hands what she'd picked for what might well be the last things she said outside of prison walls for a very long time. It would essentially be a confession, yes, but it would also be a defence- and, she hoped, it would be a brave one.

She so badly wanted to be brave.

Her friend listened carefully, sometimes frowning, at one point stopping to say, "I don't know... they're not going to like it if you bring that up..."

"I know. But they won't like anything I've got to say, not really. And can't just- I have to tell- they have to know-" she stopped, and let her breathing destabilise. "I'm not going to try and persuade them to let me off, we both know that's never going to happen. I won't grovel," she said, finally. "I won't beg." _I want to be brave._ "And I sure as hell won't lie."

When she looked back up, she saw that Lally's eyes had filled with tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The Re'em is an actual creature from the 'Fantastic Beasts book'- I can't believe Rowling hasn't put it into the films yet because it sounds AWESOME.  
> \- If you're thinking this Jackson dude sounds an awful lot like Trump, Boris Johnson, those kinds of bastards, and this election sounds a lot like more recent ones in the US and Britain... you'd be totally, totally right. I couldn't resist.  
> \- Tina's attorney's name comes from two authors, Rajaa Alsanea (Saudi, wrote Girls of Riyadh) and Nafiza Azad (Indonesian/Canadian, wrote The Candle and the Flame). Azad's novel in particular is definitely worth a read so if you're looking for books to get you through the lockdown, definitely check it out!


End file.
